


The Two Percent Horizon

by manic_intent



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M, Somewhat more of a philosophical one shot than a shippy fic, That casual!Tony/Thor fic, where Tony realizes that alien civilisations are far more advanced
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-14
Updated: 2015-08-14
Packaged: 2018-04-14 16:17:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4571223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time that Tony had even an inkling that Thor was far more than what he seemed to be was... way back <i>when</i>, back in the days when Tony had still been an Avenger and he had met Steve for the first time, in the bridge of SHIELD's helicarrier. Thor had looked around the bridge with a strange little quirk to his mouth, one that had seemed uncomfortably close to curiosity and amusement.  </p><p>It had reminded Tony of the day Howard Stark plus family had been invited to attend the inaugural opening of the Smithsonian Centre for Earth and Planetary Studies. There had been a few vintage planes in there, antique ones dating back even to the time of the Wright Brothers, and Tony had seen his seven-year-old self reflected in the shiny chassis of a Ford Trimotor, wearing a grin that was part curiosity and part amusement. Still, the similarity had been fleeting, and Tony had promptly forgotten about it, at least until now – Thor was wearing that faint grin again, as he sauntered down the line of Tony's collection of speed monsters, occasionally reaching out to touch one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Two Percent Horizon

**Author's Note:**

> I attended Neil deGrasse Tyson's Think Inc talk in Melbourne, and it was fantastic. The whole talk was incredibly entertaining, but one point that really struck me was when the moderator lady asked Neil "What keeps you up at night?" (Who writes these questions anyway?) 
> 
> Neil said - what if we're not intelligent enough to understand the universe? He mentioned that chimps share 98% of their DNA with us, but the smartest toddler can do what the smartest chimp can do. What if there's another alien race out there with a 2% advantage on us that we have on chimps? What more can they understand that humans can never understand? 
> 
> At this point I thought - _Asgard_. Admittedly, I usually write Asgard as a highly advanced society (following Clarke's laws etc) but Neil's words spawned a little ficbunny that ended up being turned into this weird one shot. I am high on flu meds, be warned.

I.

The first time that Tony had even an inkling that Thor was far more than what he seemed to be was... way back _when_ , back in the days when Tony had still been an Avenger and he had met Steve for the first time, in the bridge of SHIELD's helicarrier. Thor had looked around the bridge with a strange little quirk to his mouth, one that had seemed uncomfortably close to curiosity and amusement.

It had reminded Tony of the day Howard Stark plus family had been invited to attend the inaugural opening of the Smithsonian Centre for Earth and Planetary Studies. There had been a few vintage planes in there, antique ones dating back even to the time of the Wright Brothers, and Tony had seen his seven-year-old self reflected in the shiny chassis of a Ford Trimotor, wearing a grin that was part curiosity and part amusement. Still, the similarity had been fleeting, and Tony had promptly forgotten about it, at least until now – Thor was wearing that faint grin again, as he sauntered down the line of Tony's collection of speed monsters, occasionally reaching out to touch one. 

"Uh," Tony cleared his throat, tugging his welding mask off and putting it aside, then peeling off his heavy gloves. "Nice to see you too? Anything happen in Asgard?" 

"A great deal," Thor said blandly, stopping before an antique 1960 Ferrari 250 GTO Berlinetta, one of Tony's few but highly extravagant vices. Thor had blithely reappeared within Tony's garden only minutes ago, set off all the perimeter alarms, and then had just as blithely waltzed into the house just as Tony managed to talk FRIDAY from firing everything. FRIDAY still had a few defensive quirks in its personality, and something, possibly pre-manifestation-JARVIS, had quietly tampered with and 'improved' its sarcasm banks. 

"I presume that sir is disinclined to obey Captain Rogers' request to notify him immediately if sir encounters Prince Thor?" FRIDAY inquired. 

"Yes, sir is so disinclined," Tony shot back with a drawl. Seriously. He was going to have to reboot FRIDAY very soon, at this rate. "What do you mean 'a great deal'? Are you OK?" 

"A civil war happened. My brother and his old tricks," Thor said indifferently, as he wandered back towards Tony. "But it is now over, and I am king." 

"… Congratulations?" Tony hazarded doubtfully. "You don't seem so hot about it. And what are you doing here then? If you're King, don't you have a million things to do?" 

"I have left a friend of mine as regent at present. She is perhaps better suited to the role than I am," Thor admitted casually. "I needed to tie up a few loose ends in Midgard before I return." Thor was close enough now to be overwhelming: his arms were bared, all that crazy thick muscle, and he had a hip pressed against Tony's workbench, his grin one of lazy mischief. Tony knew what that meant, even as he swallowed and tried to will Little Tony's sudden perked up interest away. 

"… Before you get crowned King of a galactic Empire you come back to one of its backwaters for a booty call?" 

Thor laughed, but clearly galactic royalty had no shame. "If you must describe it so." 

"Well uh," Tony said regretfully, because he was an Adult about things, despite what the Tattler might think, and he _had_ been in the middle of something. "Give me an hour or so, OK? Something's not right with my project here and I'm ironing out the kinks." 

Thor glanced at the quantum cortex that Tony had been building, vaguely extrapolated from Possessed!Selvig's machine, then at the reams of equations that FRIDAY had helpfully projected in a large arc around Tony's workbench in dense numbers. "The Bifrost is not so easily replicated," he said finally. 

"Huh," Tony blinked at Thor, surprised. "You knew what I was building?" 

"Is it not obvious?" 

"But you're a Prince..." Tony trailed off, swallowing the rest of his words. 

"And are you not a Prince as well?" Thor inquired, all leonine amusement. "You are a powerful man, with much property and influence, and you have led the vanguard of battle." 

"...Maybe we don't understand Asgardian culture as much as we should." Tony decided, with another blink. "But. Sure. I was reverse engineering what Selvig built. Cheating, I know, but, I think me and a few friends of mine are on the verge of a breakthrough on the mathematics and-" 

"And here," Thor had circled around the bench, pointing at a line in the middle of a dense wall of equations. "This is incorrect." 

"Okay, buddy," Tony began, starting to grow faintly irritated, "Very funny," he added, before bringing up the line in question. Ten minutes and a few phone calls later, the new equation slotted into place, which meant recalculations in the alloys and the reactor settings and... "Wow, Thor. You've been hiding shit from me." 

"Hiding?" Thor repeated, arching an eyebrow, genuinely surprised. "My friend, you could have asked me at any time." 

"But, well," Tony waved helplessly at Thor. "You're a. I mean, I totally assumed here, and I'm sorry about it, but I didn't realize that you knew quantum physics and rarefied mathematics." 

"And should I not?" Thor inquired, still looking surprised. "It is not difficult." 

There was a long silence, where Tony opened his mouth, closed it, then choked a little before croaking out, "It's not?" 

"Not at all," Thor said mildly, bemused. "Mathematics is the one 'language' that is universal. The truth of it is encoded into all Asgardians. We store the ideas and information behind the building blocks of our existence within our DNA, written at birth. Each Asgardian knows everything that all Asgardians before him or her have known. Collectively, we can therefore look towards an understanding of the future and the universal question of balance." Thor frowned slightly. "The translation is not quite correct in Allspeak to your tongue. Perhaps your people do not yet have the words for it." 

"For what?" 

"The universal question." Thor repeated patiently. "Matter in this universe is weighed by alt-matter." He frowned again, as though frustrated. 

"Dark matter?" 

"It is dark only to your eyes," Thor said, then cocked his head, as though rethinking what the Asgardian universal translator had spat out, sighed, and glanced back at the rows of equations. "Do not feel discouraged," he added lightly. "Someday perhaps your species too will evolve." 

"We _are_ evolved," Tony said evenly, trying to keep a hold on his temper. "You guys have thousands of years of civilisation on us, maybe. But we look pretty much the same, just with different fashion choices." 

"We do share most of our DNA," Thor agreed encouragingly. 

"There you go." 

"As you yourselves share ninety-eight percent of your own DNA with the next closest species on your planet," Thor added, reading through the equations again. "As an analogy, that is perhaps the best I can come up with in your language, to describe the difference between humanity and the Asgardian existence." 

"… you guys think we're _chimps_?" Tony concluded, incredulous. 

"Not in the least. Yours is a sentient species, one of many. But it is an unenlightened one," Thor added, "Bent at present upon its own destruction. It is the fate of most sentient species. Stagnation or self-destruction. Only a handful evolve." 

"That's... a rather depressing way to look at it." 

"Most of your species lives in great poverty, ground there by the very richest," Thor shrugged, "In many places, half of your species live lives prejudiced by the fact of their own gender. You wage wars upon each other on imaginary ideologies. The very best of your governments are oft inept, corrupt or both. You are destroying your world with your primitive fuel technology, with no real global impetus to do better. I could continue," Thor added gently, "But no matter. Asgard has seen civilisations as that on Earth come and go. Your people carry our geneseed, after all." 

"Geneseed?" 

"It was an experiment to solve part of the universal question," Thor leaned back against the workbench, arms folded. "Of those worlds that we seeded with our likeness, and pushed towards life, only a handful of civilisations have risen to the space age. And of those, only Xandar has come close to the Asgardian balance. It is a curiosity still for the ages. The Asgardian geneseed is flawed, perhaps. We are still in the midst of analysing it." 

Tony continued to stare blankly at Thor, and Thor stirred, managing a wry smile. "Do not be discouraged, Anthony Howardson." 

"Firstly, remember what I said about calling me that?" Tony said automatically, and then flushed as he finally wrapped his brain around the last ten minutes. "And secondly. I think I need a few minutes to catch up after you just kicked years of various fundamental scientific theories into the dirt. Are you fucking with me?" 

"Believe what you like," Thor said, if kindly, then added, thoughtfully, "You are upset?" 

"Of course I am upset!" 

"Ah." Thor glanced at him soberly. "Then I apologize." 

"For what?" Tony demanded, his tone edged, "Messing with the natives?" 

"Egocentricity burns brightly in your species. It is not unusual, in a species like yours, one left with little to no meaningful contact with other sentient forms." 

"'Left'?" 

"When a species in our empire reaches sentient thought," Thor explained, "The Asgardian council observes it for a while, to see if that homeworld should be quarantined or brought carefully into the fold. Sometimes, we may choose to give a civilisation a certain nudge, here and there. Subtly, of course." 

"And we... passed?" Tony asked, disbelievingly. "All this and we passed? You're here, right?" 

"Earth has not 'passed'," Thor said gently. "Your people failed a long time ago." 

Tony exhaled. "… Actually? This is my total lack of surprise." 

"One factor we take into consideration is ambition. In particular, when a species looks upon the stars, does it feel curiosity? If so, does it work towards finding a way offworld? And if so, what is its main impetus?" 

"War." Tony said, sounding resigned. "Okay. So we suck. But you're still here." 

"My father wished to teach me humility when he exiled me," Thor shrugged. "It would not have worked had I been sent to a spacefaring civilisation. The continued contact is unfortunate." Thor said, studying the equations again, "And it has pushed your civilisation towards integration, despite everything. So we are reviewing the matter." 

"Oh you are, are you?" 

"Building a miniature Bifrost is one thing," Thor gestured at the equations, "Putting aside the fact that an uncontrolled Bridge will have catastrophic effects on a Bridged world, I am uncertain that your species in fact possesses the self-control to integrate peacefully into a galactic community." 

"You're worried that we'll get space-capable and then spend it dropping rocks down the gravity wells of people we don't like." Somehow, Tony could totally see that happening. It wasn't as if the sentiment was new, albeit not on a galactic scale. If all of humanity ever became fully space capable, some asshole out there would probably drop a rock down Earth's own gravity well to bring about the Reckoning, or something equally batshit crazy. Ruin it for everybody. 

"Your species is very good at killing each other over trivial matters. At present all that suffering is confined to one homeworld." Thor pointed out, as though he had read Tony's mind. "Perhaps in a hundred years, two hundred, we shall see." 

Tony stared soberly at the equations, then down at his workbench, and exhaled slowly. "FRIDAY, sweep and keep, thanks." The equations flickered away, and Tony folded his arms, leaning against his bench. "Okay. You have killed the mood. Actually, you've killed _all_ my moods. I'm just going to go and get drunk now... where are you going?" 

Thor paused on his way out. "I seem to have given offense." 

Tony let out a sigh. "You've... never mind. Let's just get a drink."

II.

Thor did not get drunk, or at least, it seemed 'Midgardian drink' wasn't strong enough. Someday, Tony was going to have to get his hands on Asgardian alcohol. It probably could melt iron.

"The thing is," Tony slurred, as he slouched against Thor on his couch, "If everyone who is space capable is so Gandhi, why the hell were we invaded by angry space elves and angry space worms and... and... things?" 

"The civilisations that Asgard shepherds towards the space age are peaceful," Thor corrected, as he finished another glass of Tony's quickly dwindling store of Yamazaki, "However, the Asgardian empire does not span the universe. We are at war with several empires, including the Chitauri, which you have met. Piracy is also rampant, particularly closer to rim space." 

"So it's turtles all the way down." That figured. 

Thor frowned at him, puzzled. "Down where?" 

"You can try your best but you can't keep assholes from going to space," Tony elaborated, with a muzzy, whisky-marinated sense of savage satisfaction, not dulled in the least by Thor's wry smile. 

"No. Not in other jurisdictions, at least." 

"If we're so bad, why're you slumming down here?" Tony sloshed more whisky into his glass, cursing briefly as he got it over his fingers. "Why don't you head off to one of your happy little space colonies?" 

"I value my friends," Thor said, and reached over to squeeze Tony's hand reassuringly, the big sap, and somehow Tony went from being slouched irritably on his couch to straddling Thor's lap, sticky hands caught in that stupid cape and jerking it off the shoulder catches, growling as he felt the low rumble of Thor's laughter against him. They kissed, Tony angry, Thor gentle, though it wasn't as though Tony could make Thor bleed like this, not with whatever weird bioengineering had created the deceptively soft give of Thor's skin: Tony couldn't bleed Thor with just his teeth. 

This dance always ended up the same way: Tony breathless and shaking as he screwed himself down over Thor's cock, spread wide, knees trembling, and today temper lent a brittle edge to his lust, a sort of desperate and bitter temper to his pleasure. Perhaps Thor sensed this: he was quieter than usual, his hands warm and gentle over Tony's hips, eyes fixed on Tony's mouth, moving against Tony's haphazard rhythm with a gentle and inexorable purpose that eventually overwhelmed. Tony buried his mouth against Thor's neck, breathed in that strange, animal warmth, wrapped his arms over Thor's impossibly solid shoulders and squeezed his eyes tightly closed when he came. 

Thor always was the one who cleaned them up and got them to bed, which Tony usually appreciated, lazy as he was after sex, but today instead of kissing Thor and rolling over to sleep, Tony rolled onto his back instead, hands folded over his chest. The operation to remove the shards from his chest had been successful, but the scar tissue remained, thick and ugly and ridged under his fingertips. Thor didn't even seem to notice it, not that he ever did, tucking himself close, hogging the bed, watching Tony with his usual calm intensity. 

"I should not have said anything," Thor murmured at last, and pressed a brushing kiss over Tony's shoulder. 

"Still thinking about that." 

"If it is much comfort," Thor added lightly, "Asgardians are not the most evolved species in the universe either. There are others. Some are not even carbon-based." 

"Really? More advanced?" Tony tried to wrap his mind around that. Thor's species had learned how to harness wormholes, learned bioengineering beyond anything Tony could even think of, and Tony still had no clue how Loki's spear or Thor's hammer even _worked_. 

"Of course." 

"And... what can they do? Do I want to know?" 

"Much of what they can do is beyond Asgardian comprehension. Though our scientists do on occasion devote a century or so to thinking about it." 

"And they're all... chilled out as well? Love and peace and the universe?" 

"We would not know," Thor said soberly. "For the most part, we are unable to communicate with most. But the Spartoi do sometimes make an effort to bridge the gap. It is our understanding that they are engaged in combating some sort of threat. One that we cannot perceive." 

War even at the very top of the ladder. "Turtles," Tony murmured, depressed all over again, and Thor chuckled softly, planting a kiss on Tony's temple, then further, against his nose, his beard ticklish and bristly. 

"How long are you staying this time?" Tony asked, as the kiss brushed lower, over his mouth. 

"Not long. But I do have to speak to Steven come the morning. Then I have a matter of urgency to attend to in Xandar." 

"Something I can help with?" Tony asked, without thinking, then felt a little like an idiot once he said it. 

"No." Thor said gently, if with a grin. "Galactic politics." 

"Ah," Tony said, for it was always sobering to be reminded of exactly _who_ Thor was, of the sheer craziness of having a King of an entire galactic empire in his bed, snuggling close and tucking Tony under his chin, and when Tony managed to sleep, eventually, he dreamed of the endless nothing between the stars, uncomfortable and restless. 

In the morning, Thor left hurriedly, if with an apologetic kiss, and Tony waved him off and lay in bed, tangled up in the warm spot, yawning. 

"Thor has left the premises," FRIDAY reported, after a while. 

"Thanks." Tony said absently, and scratched at his jaw, staring up at the ceiling. 

"You have several emails from MIT with regards to the cortex. Would sir like to review them now?" 

"No. Not now." Tony exhaled loudly, then pushed himself up from the bed. "Archive the whole project, send them my regards, busy now, etc." 

"Sir?" 

"I think it's about time that we gave another crack at the energy crisis." Tony decided, as he got up. "Review all the latest research on clean energy systems." 

"All right, sir." FRIDAY went silent as Tony ambled into the bathroom, gripping the sink as he stared at himself in the mirror, pale, rumbled, and a little red-eyed. Old. Tony turned his head, examining the faint touch of silver in his sideburns, and grimaced. 

He might have only a few more decades on this tiny blue marble. But Tony knew now that he had to make it count. Once, he had privatised world peace. Maybe it was time to try and hack civilisation itself. "FRIDAY?" 

"Sir." 

"Schedule me a breakfast call with Elon. We're going to get this show on the road."

**Author's Note:**

> twitter: manic_intent  
> tumblr: manic-intent
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
